How to analyze your own golf swing, frame by frame

A bad camera angle will show you faults you don't have. Two angles cover almost everything:

• Down-the-line: camera behind you, pointing at the target, lined up with your hands or the ball-to-target line.
• Face-on: camera square to your chest, level with the ball.

Put the phone at roughly hand height on a tripod or a bag, and stand far enough back that the clubhead stays in frame at the top. Don't move the camera between swings, or your reference lines stop meaning anything.

Use your phone's slow-motion mode if it has one. More frames per second makes impact and transition much easier to catch. The full filming guide goes through setups for the range and for home.

Most swing problems start before the club moves. At address, look at three things:

• Spine tilt. From down-the-line, you should be bent forward from the hips with a fairly straight back, not hunched at the shoulders.
• Ball position. From face-on, check where the ball sits relative to your feet. It moves forward as the club gets longer.
• Posture and balance. Weight should sit roughly over the middle of the feet, not the toes or heels, with arms hanging under the shoulders.

The most useful line here runs up your spine, from the tailbone to the base of the neck. You will reuse it at every later checkpoint to see whether you keep your posture.

Step forward until the shaft is parallel to the ground on the way back. This is where a lot of swings go wrong quietly.

From down-the-line, check two things:

• Shaft direction. A common checkpoint is the shaft running roughly parallel to your target line at this point.
• Clubhead vs hands. The clubhead should be outside your hands or in line with them. If it has whipped inside behind you early, the rest of the backswing often has to compensate.

From face-on, look at whether your chest and arms have started turning together, or whether the hands have picked the club up on their own.

At the top, you are checking how much you turned and where the club ended up.

• Shoulder turn. From face-on, your back should be turning toward the target. A short turn often shows up as an arms-only swing.
• Lead arm. Look at how straight the lead arm is. Some bend is normal; a sharp collapse at the elbow usually costs width and consistency.
• Club position. From down-the-line, see whether the club points across the line, along it, or is laid off. Any of these can work, but you should know which one is yours.

Check your spine line from setup too. If your head and chest have moved well off it, you have probably swayed or stood up.

Transition is the first few frames of the downswing, and it happens fast. This is where you will need 0.25x and single frames.

Two common faults show up here:

• Over the top. The club moves outward, away from you, as the downswing starts, and approaches the ball from outside the line. From down-the-line it often looks like the shaft is steeper than it was in the backswing. See over the top for how to spot it and fix it.
• Casting. The wrist angle you set at the top gets thrown out early, so the club reaches the ball with the hands no longer leading. From face-on the angle between the lead arm and shaft opens up early. See casting.

From down-the-line, a line drawn along the shaft at address is a handy reference. Watch whether the club comes down above or below it.

Impact is a single frame. Find it, then compare it with your setup.

• Hands. With an iron, the hands are usually slightly ahead of the ball at impact. Hands behind the ball often go with casting or a flip.
• Hips. From down-the-line, see whether your hips have moved toward the ball compared with the address line. If they have, and your spine has stood up, that is early extension.
• Head. Compare head position with address. A lot of movement up or down shows up as fat and thin contact.

If you left the spine line from setup on screen, you can see straight away whether you kept your posture.

The finish tells you about balance and weight shift, which affect everything earlier in the swing.

• Weight on the lead side. Most of your weight should be on the lead foot, with the trail foot up on its toe.
• Balance. You should be able to hold the finish without stepping. Falling back or toward the ball points to a balance problem earlier on.
• Chest facing the target. From face-on, a full turn through means your chest faces the target or slightly left of it for a right-hander.

If the finish looks wrong, go back to transition. Balance problems at the end often start there.

Once you have drawn your lines, you can ask for a second opinion on the same frame.

1. Pause on the checkpoint you want to check. Setup, top of the backswing and impact give the clearest reads.
2. Tap AI on mobile or AI Coach on desktop, then Analyze Current Frame.
3. You get back the swing phase it sees, up to three strengths, up to two fixes with what to feel instead, and one drill.

Only the paused frame is sent for analysis. The video itself stays on your device.

Treat the result as a starting point. It reads one still frame, so it can't see tempo or how you got there. Compare what it says with what your lines show.

A reference swing makes your lines easier to read. Load a pro swing and your own, and pause both at the same checkpoint.

The analyzer has two built-in samples you can open straight away: a Rory McIlroy driver swing and a Tiger Woods iron swing. Each one is split-screen, with face-on on the left and down-the-line on the right, so they are also a good way to practise drawing lines before you film yourself.

Don't try to copy a tour pro position for position. Use them to see what the checkpoint looks like, then judge your own swing against your own setup lines. The compare to a pro guide explains how to line up the frames.